Spain: New car sales up 18.2% in December, 3.3% in 2013

New vehicle sales in Spain rose 18.2 percent to 60,513 units in December, car manufacturers’ association Anfac said on Thursday.

On the same time, Anfac said in 2013 were sold 722,703 new cars, an increase of 3.3 percent compared to 2012 when 699,589 new vehicles were registered (-13.4 % vs 2011).

“The year 2013 has exceeded figure of 722,000 registrations. The Spanish car market has grown in the last quarter at a rate of 22 percent, an increase that has not been seen since the second quarter of 2010.

However, the volume of the year remains low. One of every two cars on our roads has more than 10 years,” David Barrientos, Anfac’s Communications directors said.

Officially, Spain went out of recession in the third quarter with a 0.1% GDP growth, but it still has a record unemployment rate of more than 26 percent. For example, Spain Ikea received about 20,000 applications for only 400 jobs last month.

“Our server collapsed. It wasn’t able to handle that many applications,” said Ikea Spain’s Rodrigo Sanchez.

There are about 4.8 million people out of work in Spain at this moment.